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While walking around the palatial grounds of IKEA on Sunday, my legs buckled and I almost fell to the ground. Twice.

No, it wasn’t IKEA’s naming conventions that startled me — what the hell is an Ektorp Tullsta, anyway? A forgotten Jedi master?

It was my legs. My dogs were barking. And they were telling me to get some rest.

So I took a couple of days off. Until yesterday. I hit the streets last night and did my White House tour.

The White House tour is a pretty typical weeknight run for me. I start by heading south on 16th Street or Connecticut Avenue, run in front or behind the White House depending on how much distance I’m in the mood for, and then head back up to Adams Morgan, a solid 4 to 5-miler.

It’s a fun route, too, because of the sheer number of goofy tourists you see, especially on a warm evening like last night.

While I use Camera+ as my default iPhone camera, I decided to challenge myself by only shooting with the Shake It Photo app. This would require me to be more alert of my surroundings and look for good scenes to photograph rather than rely on editing tricks after the run.

I like Shake It Photo as a photography app; it’s actually one of my favorites. It creates square, even frames and produces a fairly vivid image without distorting lighting or colors.

For this reason, I think Shake It Photo makes for an ideal portrait photo app. I never thought to use it for landscapes or snapshots. Which is why it was fun last night to do something completely different and see if I could create non-portrait photos, to use it in a different way.

The results were encouraging. So was my run. Despite doing my first “hot” run of the season, I busted out 4.38 miles at 40:04 (a surprising — for me — 9:09 pace).

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